Several years ago, I suggested
in my students' union newspaper that Israel shouldn't exist. I also said
the sympathy evoked by the Holocaust was a very handy cover for Israeli
atrocities. Overnight I became public enemy number one. I was a Muslim
fundamentalist, a Jew-hater, somebody who trivialised the memory of the
most abominable act in history. My denouncers followed me, photographed
me, and even put telephone calls through to my family telling them to expect
a call from the grim reaper.

Thankfully, my notoriety in Jewish circles has since waned to the extent
that recently I gave an inter-faith lecture sponsored by the Leo Baeck
College, even though my views have remained the same. Israel has no right
to exist. I know it's a hugely unfashionable thing to say and one which,
given the current parlous state of the peace process, some will also find
irresponsible. But it's a fact that I have always considered central to
any genuine peace formula.

Certainly there is no moral case
for the existence of Israel. Israel stands as the realisation of a biblical
statement. Its raison d'être was famously delineated by former prime
minister Golda Meir. "This country exists as the accomplishment of a promise
made by God Himself. It would be absurd to call its legitimacy into account."

That biblical promise is Israel's
only claim to legitimacy. But whatever God meant when he promised Abraham
that "unto thy seed have I given this land, from the river of Egypt unto
the great river, the Euphrates," it is doubtful that he intended it to
be used as an excuse to take by force and chicanery a land lawfully inhabited
and owned by others.

It does no good to anyone to brush
this fact, uncomfortable as it might be, under the table. But that has
been the failing with Oslo. When it signed the agreement, the PLO made
the cardinal error of assuming that you could bury the hatchet by rewriting
history. It accepted as a starting point that Israel had a right to exist.
The trouble with this was that it also meant, by extension, an acceptance
that the way Israel came into being was legitimate. As the latest troubles
have shown, ordinary Palestinians are not prepared to follow their leaders
in this feat of intellectual amnesia.

Israel's other potential claim to
legitimacy, international recognition, is just as dubious. The two pacts
which sealed Palestine's future were both concluded by Britain. First we
signed the Sykes-Picot agreement with France, pledging to divvy up Ottoman
spoils in the Levant. A year later, in 1917, the Balfour Declaration promised
a national home for the Jewish people. Under international law the declaration
was null and void since Palestine did not belong to Britain - under the
pact of the League of Nations it belonged to Turkey.

By the time the UN accepted a resolution
on the partition of Palestine in 1947, Jews constituted 32% of the population
and owned 5.6% of the land. By 1949, largely as a result of paramilitary
organisations such as the Haganah, Irgun and Stern gang, Israel controlled
80% of Palestine and 770,000 non-Jews had been expelled from their country.

This then is the potted history of
the iniquities surrounding its own birth that Israel must acknowledge in
order for peace to have a chance. After years of war, peace comes from
forgiving, not forgetting; people never forget but they have an extraordinary
capacity to forgive. Just look at South Africa, which showed the world
that a cathartic truth must precede reconciliation.

Far from being a force for liberation
and safety after decades of suffering, the idea that Israel is some kind
of religious birthright has only imprisoned Jews in a never-ending cycle
of conflict. The "promise" breeds an arrogance which institutionalises
the inferiority of other peoples and generates atrocities against them
with alarming regularity. It allows soldiers to defy their consciences
and blast unarmed schoolchildren. It gives rise to legislation seeking
to prevent the acquisition of territory by non-Jews.

More crucially, the promise limits
Israel's capacity to seek models of coexistence based on equality and the
respect of human rights. A state based on so exclusivist a claim to legitimacy
cannot but conceive of separation as a solution. But separation is not
the same as lasting peace; it only pulls apart warring parties. It does
not heal old wounds, let alone redress historical wrongs.

However, take away the biblical right
and suddenly mutual coexistence, even a one-state solution, doesn't seem
that far-fetched. What name that coexistence will take is less important
than the fact that peoples have forgiven and that some measure of justice
has been restored. Jews will continue to live in the Holy Land - as per
the promise - as equals alongside its other rightful inhabitants.

If that kind of self-reproach is
forthcoming, Israel can expect the Palestinians to be forgiving and magnanimous
in return. The alternative is perpetual war.